Archive for July, 2022
07 Jul 2022
Boris has resigned. Raheem Kassan laments what might have been.
Boris Johnson was – and maybe again someday will be – as catastrophic a Prime Minister as many of his original detractors, your faithful reporter included, initially warned.
But it didn’t have to be like this. He was never forced to go the route of soft touch, centre-left “conservatism” partnering hand-in-hand with the likes of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. But he did. And for the most part, it always came down to one thing: his wife Carrie Symonds (or Johnson… but maybe not for long?).
To head-scratching friends on Capitol Hill I describe it thusly: The Johnson government was built, by Carrie, on the sand of her own ability to blackmail the people around her. The corporate media journalist she had long trysts with. The Members of Parliament she worked with, around, and under. The civil servants who for some reason – probably fear of crippling exhaustion – loathed her presence and went along with demands to get her off their backs.
Carrie, a former Conservative Party HQ communications staffer and official at the Clinton Foundation-linked Oceana, immediately corrupted what little semblance of conservatism Johnson once had, as only a third wife can. The speed at which Carrie operated, I’m told, is impressive. And almost every single scandal had her bungling fingerprints all over it. Often, as she gifted him terrible advice, she would brief the opposite to the media, covering her backside along the way.
And whether she decides to stay with the man she only committed to once he became Prime Minister, you can bet Carrie and her small cadre of unqualified grifters she bounced into government jobs will not be far from the corridors of power in Westminster for long.
Boris, in true Boris form, will likely fall upwards into a regular Telegraph, or Spectator column – the establishment looks after its own. Within a few months he’ll be talking about making a big comeback, comparing himself to Churchill, and The Daily Express newspaper will probably feature front cover of him in a boxing ring, 30lbs lighter, with the headline “FIGHTING FIT.”
You see the trouble is British politics has become entirely predictable – which is why even from 3000 miles away, I was able to easily predict Boris’s political downfall. As predictably perhaps, the Conservative Party will now go ahead and pick another wobbly, centre-left candidate like Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak and the whole thing will play out again, possibly sans Carrie (for a little while at least).
Until then, expect the usual, “OH MY GOSH WHAT IS GOING ON” theatrics from the BBC and Sky News. You can be safe in the knowledge that if they are feigning shock, nothing much is changing at all.
Boris seems to have lived up to the many criticisms leveled at him by opponents, being guilty, in Simon Heffer’s list of: “indolence, casualness, monstrous selfishness, lack of attention to detail, incompetence and monumental dishonesty”.
But, it all seems rather bizarre from the American perspective. The British seem to be eaten up with Pi (a 19th century term referring to: “piety,” “sanctimony,” “over-exaggerated moralism.”].
Boris’s fall stems from two hullabaloos, the first occasioned by some Downing Street after-hours parties deemed to have violated COVID-quarantine regulations, the second resulting from Boris appointing Chris Pincher Tory Party Deputy Whip last February. Mr. Pincher apparently drunkenly groped two male members at the Carleton Club this 30th of June. The member of Parliament for Tamworth has produced a series of scandals based upon sexual advances toward males.
Britain seems to have in place a peculiar male version of our own Me Too Movement. The Love That Currently Never Shuts Up is a much more prominent feature of British life, rooted significantly in the Public School Tradition, and generally tolerated in elite circles. Somehow, in Chris Pincher’s case, lots of British men seem to have turned into shrinking, sensitive virgins, outraged, and suffering from some form of the vapors, as a consequence of an unwelcome poofter’s pass. In America, this sort of invitation could lead to a punch in the face, but all the victim theater would not take place.
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Monica Showalter identifies better issues than those petty scandals:
Based on a back-of-the-envelope analysis (it’s early), it seems that the real problem was that Johnson wasn’t governing as a true Thatcherite conservative as the voters who had elected him had hoped he would.
The top issue in Britain, as in the U.S. is inflation, or as it’s put in Britain, according to the U.K. press, the “cost of living.” Any plans to fix that? Apparently not.
Issue two was Brexit — he’s still futzing around on that though he was better than his predecessor. Leave means leave.
Three is immigration — the migrants are still rolling in and claiming benefits, going to the front of the line for five-star housing and other things denied ordinary Brits. No sane leader worth their salt would permit that kind of thing going on to please E.U. bureaucrats. There were other assorted bunglings such as refusing to allow Ukrainian refugees in who had sponsors willing to house and feed them. Obviously, something wasn’t working.
Four was global warming. He just couldn’t stop himself promoting that and shutting down Britain’s viable energy putting in place worthless greenie substitutes. Bad policies like that are not only not rooted in science, they are hell on consumers who must deal with higher costs and less reliable energy. To cling to that junk science was absolute poison for his government.
Five was COVID lockdowns — which were as badly managed and driven by quacks as the ones seen in our country and in places like Colombia, where another conservative leader was recently thrown out. The whole thing was the mother of bad ideas and unfortunately, conservatives pay for these things.
In short, he played a conservative on T.V. but he governed as a leftist. That’s a failure to lead, and sure enough, the discontent in Britain is over his leadership, not the Thatcherite elements of his party platform. Johnson’s citation of his “successes” as prime minister — such as lockdowns and Ukraine intevention are rather telling in this regard. He didn’t cite any that Margaret Thatcher would be proud to call her own.
It put his polling numbers in the crapper. It prompted a huge slew of resignations from his cabinet, each character huffing out in a bid to save his or her political skin. It certainly was the same thing did in the president of Colombia’s party a few weeks ago, this claim to be a conservative while governing as a leftist, but Johnson didn’t heed that warning.
Now Britain faces the dangerous prospect of early elections, and the real prospect of the Labour Party leftists taking over. They will dismantle Brexit and print money like maniacs, driving inflation sky-high.
The California experience of having a RINO in office offers a mordant precedent for Britain. Following the exit of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, leaving the state in a mess, the net result has been California’s hard turn toward becoming a blue state. One hopes against hope that this isn’t what happens to Great Britain, too.
06 Jul 2022
When your gas gauge doesn’t work, you do this.
04 Jul 2022
Childe Hassam, The Fourth of July, 1916, New York Historical Society, New York.
03 Jul 2022
For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstance which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.
—William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust, 1948.
03 Jul 2022
Crossing the Emmitsburg Road.
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“Give them cold steel.” — Brigadier General Lewis Armistead (February 18, 1817–July 3, 1863)
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Dr. Joseph Hold of the 11th Mississippi, Davis’s brigade, anticipated that the afternoon would be busy and set up his dressing station early in a shelter behind Seminary Ridge. . .When the cannonade opened and the Federals’ guns replied, stretcher bearers, crouching low, began bringing in the wounded. Among the first was an athletic young man with reddish golden hair, “a princely fellow,” the doctor called him, with a calm manner and a delightful smile, one of that gay, turbulent company that had left with the University Greys of Oxford to form Company A of the 11th Mississippi.
The physician examined the left arm, cut off at the elbow, and offered encouragement.
“Why, doctor, that isn’t where I am hurt.” The boy pulled back a blanket and showed where a shell had ripped deep across his abdomen, carrying away much that was vital. “I am in great agony,” he said, still smiling. “Let me die easy, dear doctor.”
But before the lad had drunk the cup containing the concentrated solution of opium, the doctor held up his right arm so he could write: “My dear mother. . .Remember that I am true to my country and my regret at dying is that she is not free. . .you must not regret that my body cannot be obtained. It is a mere matter of form anyhow. . .Send my dying release to Miss Mary. . .” He signed, JERE S. GAGE, Co. A, 11 Miss. By that time, the letter was covered with blood.
Then he raised his cup to a group of soldiers. “I do not invite you to drink with me,” he remarked wryly, then with fervor, “but I drink a toast to you, the Southern Confederacy, and to victory.”
* * *
Then Pickett stood in front of his division and gave the final word: “Charge the enemy and remember old Virginia!” His voice was clear and strong as he spoke the order: “Forward! Guide center! March!” . . .
“I don’t want to make this charge,” Longstreet declared emphatically. “I don’t believe it can succeed. I would stop Pickett now, but that General Lee has ordered it and expects it.”
Further remarks showed he wanted some excuse for calling off the whole attack.
But Longstreet and Alexander had lost control. As they talked, the turf trembled about them and the long line of grey infantry broke from the woods. First came Garnett’s Virginians, the general in front, his old blue overcoat buttoned tightly around his neck. Abreast was Kemper’s trim line marching majestically into the open fields, the fifes piping “Dixie,” the ranks in nearly perfect alignment. Far to the left could be heard the drum rolls of the Carolina regiments — Pettigrew and Trimble were in motion. The hour of the generals had passed. The infantrymen from the Richmond offices and Pearisburg farmlands, the “Greys” from the halls of “Old Miss” and the “flower of the Cape Fear section,” had taken the Confederate cause into their hands.
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The assaulting column consisted of 41 regiments and one battalion. . .Nineteen of the regiments were from Virginia, 15 from North Carolina, 3 each from Tennessee and Mississippi, and one regiment and one battalion from Alabama.
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Garnett, with a big voice issuing from his frail body, rode ahead of his line regulating the pace, admonishing his men not to move too rapidly. From the skirmish line, Captain Shotwell obtained one of the rare views of the Confederate advance: the “glittering forest of bright bayonets,” the column coming down the slope “in superb alignment,” the “murmur and jingle” and “rustle of thousands of feet amid the stubble” which stirred up a cloud of dust “like the dash of spray at the prow of a vessel.”
In front of Pickett flew the blue banner of the Old Dominion with the motto, “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” and the Stars and Bars of the Confederacy (the red battle flag with its blue cross not yet being in general use). The regimental flags flapped. A soft warm wind was blowing from the land they loved.
Glenn Tucker, “High Tide at Gettysburg.”
03 Jul 2022
US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launcher.
Maybe, says Lawrence Freedman.
[T]he Russians are unlikely to keep on fighting should it become clear that they are likely to be defeated.
One lesson from the Snake Island episode, as well as the withdrawal from Kyiv, is that the Russian commanders can recognise when they are in a losing position and withdraw rather than take unnecessary punishment. Because we have been through a period of slow, grinding advances from Russia there is a tendency to assume that Ukraine will also have to overcome a tenacious Russian defence, that the third stage may look like the second, except with the roles reversed.
This is not as obvious as it may seem. Not only will Ukrainian tactics likely differ but, if they start being pushed back, the Russians will need to decide how much they really want to hold on to territory at the expense of preserving what is left of their army. If, at some point, the Russian command see only adverse trends ahead they may consider the long-term and the need to maintain their armed force to deal with future threats, other than Ukraine. Russia cannot afford an inch by inch retreat to the border, taking losses all the way. At some point they may need to cut their losses. This would be the point where they might urge Putin to engage in serious negotiations (for example reviving earlier proposals on a form of neutrality in return for full withdrawal) to provide political cover for their withdrawal.
Whether or not we get to this stage is a different matter. The challenge for Ukraine is to develop an offensive with some momentum to the point where there is no readily available way for it to be reversed by the Russians. This is a challenge because the Ukrainians will need to advance by means that do not solely involve direct assaults on Russians positions. Over the next few weeks we should start to get some sense of whether Ukraine can start to take the initiative and impose its own priorities on Russia rather than the other way round, and how well the Russians are able to respond to the steady improvement of Ukrainian capabilities. Should Ukrainian forces be able to create any momentum, however, then the situation could move in their favour very quickly. Can the Ukrainians win? Yes. Will the Ukrainians win? Not yet clear, but the possibility should not be dismissed.
RTWT
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